someone says: i have forgotten how to pray; this is not to say that there is no divinity between us, in this; merely that i do not know what to do with it.
Snow is falling, and not the thick wet snow falling everywhere else. The air around him is too cold for wet snow, so each flake that lands on the black of his body (met by tiny threads of electricity that hiss quietly as they touch) is as cold and as perfectly formed as a flake in a storybook. And they, Andras and Yana, are two dark spots in the white so bright it hurts his eyes, scowls mirrored across the space between them.
Who has cost me my prey? she growls, a sound that rolls out of her like thunder. Andras sees his eyes close, tucks his chin against his chest for a moment, and breathes. He can't stop the thing that rises in him like a balloon, suddenly so full he feels he might pop, and he can't stop the way his mouth tucks into a grin so tight it hurts his jaw. He takes just a moment to bask in it, the stink of danger that seeps into the clearing, the unholy hush that follows it.
What are you doing? says a voice in the distance, maybe multiple voices now, and the laughter like it is him laughing, like Andras himself is the wind in the trees and the crackling of his own electricity. What are you doing? What are you doing? Being an animal, he thinks. For better or worse.
Andras opens his eyes, slowly. He is still smiling, like a rabid dog, full of teeth and poison. He hopes, he hopes, he hopes. It is leaking out of him as he speaks, like steam, releasing pressure. "Andras," he answers, "Warden of Delumine. Not that it matters." For a moment he stares at her in expectant silence -- but she, almost tragically, does not erupt in a storm of claws and teeth, or burst into flames, or continue to threaten him at all. It discharges off his wings in waves of shuddering blue light, popping as it does.
"For someone on the hunt, you seem awfully worried about what I'm doing." Andras grins with too many teeth and lungs so full of hope he could die. "What are you hunting?"
all you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift the spear and say yes as it flashes.
@
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
